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John Rogers, known as “the people’s sculptor,” was a pioneer of widely accessible art in the nineteenth century. Exploring themes ranging from the Civil War to domestic life to familiar theater and literary references, Rogers was the forerunner of populist artists of the twentieth century, especially Norman Rockwell. Three experts compare these two titans of popular art—along with other popular artists, including Andy Warhol—and discuss why their work was so resonant with the American public.

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Long before Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation, opponents of slavery employed every available literary form — from essays and plays to sermons and hymns — to wage a heroic battle. An expert panel reflects on the pioneering writers and thinkers, from the eighteenth century through Emancipation, who challenged social norms and whose revolutionary ideas helped overthrow a poisonous national institution.

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Relying on a diverse cast of unforgettable characters, Max Boot crafts a complete global history of guerrilla uprisings through the ages. Beginning with the first insurgencies in the ancient world — when Alexander the Great discovered that fleet nomads were harder to defeat than massive conventional armies — Mr. Boot masterfully guides us from the Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire up through the horrors of the French-Indochina War and the shadowy, post-9/11 battlefields of today.

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In the pantheon of American Presidents, only George Washington can rival Abraham Lincoln for impact, influence and a continued relevance in the American imagination. Four historians consider Lincoln’s most dramatic legacy: the Emancipation Proclamation. This seminal document has been used by those who wish to hail him as the Great Emancipator and by those who wish to pillory him because they consider his once radical effort at emancipation insufficient.

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Two titans in the world of architecture and preservation sit down for a talk in conjunction with the exhibition The Landmarks of New York and discuss how architects can honor the past without neglecting the future.

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From the moment Chief Justice John Roberts administered the Oath of Office at Barack Obama’s inauguration, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the White House has been confrontational. Both men are brilliant and determined to change the course of the nation — and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue. Jeffrey Toobin gives a gripping insider’s account of the ideological war between the Roberts Court and the Obama administration.

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He was the author of the Declaration of Independence, a leading thinker of the Enlightenment and one of America’s most fascinating Founding Fathers. Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham draws on his new biography to paint an intimate portrait of Jefferson — the human being, the president and the politician — a flawed, contradictory, elusive man at the center of a tumultuous and transformative time.

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Edmund Morris, the distinguished biographer and author of a new collection of literary essays, speaks about James Gould Cozzens’s great war novel Guard of Honor. Cozzens, born in New York in 1903, has been unjustly forgotten. But since 1948, when Guard of Honor won the Pulitzer Prize, a consistent body of criticism has held it to be the supreme piece of American fiction emerging from World War II. Although it rises to a shocking climax, it is primarily a study in the morality of war.

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Pennsylvania Station was the first modern transportation complex in America. Conceived by the Pennsylvania Railroad’s brilliant president Alexander Cassatt, it brought electrically driven long distance and commuter trains under both the Hudson and East Rivers, crosstown under Manhattan’s 32nd Street to a magnificent new station at 7th Avenue. Join us to see a story of bold imagination, innovation and our later mishandling handling of Cassatt’s masterpiece.

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In the second program in this two-part series, three distinguished Civil War historians continue to explore the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War battle that has horrified and captivated the nation since it was fought nearly 150 years ago.